Today in Junior Unit A (Emily and Jill's classroom), students "previewed" their lunches and predicted how many items would be composted, recycled/Terracycled, or thrown in the trash at the end of lunch. After eating, students collected data on how many items they actually placed in each of the receptacles. The class discussed possible reasons for the differences between the predicted and actual outcomes.

The photo shows students adding plastic chips to containers to represent items that were recycled/trashed/composted. Collecting the data in this way allowed us to quickly and visually compare our predictions and actual outcomes.